Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported, Atlantic City’s once-proud casino industry took another hit as the owners of the Trump Plaza casino said they expected to shutdown the operation in two months time. On Monday, the casino followed up by sending layoff notices to some 1,000 employees ahead of the expected closure.
If Trump Plaza does close as expected, “Atlantic City could lose a third of its casinos and a quarter of its casino workforce in less than nine months,” according to the Associated Press. “Bob McDevitt, president of local 54 of the Unite-HERE union, said 7,000 casino workers — or about one in four — have been warned their jobs could disappear within 60 days.” Trump Plaza, built in 1984 for $210 million, has been limping along itself of late and, the AP reports, “booked less than half its rooms in the first quarter of 2014, and had the lowest gaming revenue of any of the city’s casinos in May, according to state documents.”
It’s a devastating blow to the city’s economy, built around casinos whose customer base has been whittled away by new gambling outlets in neighboring states. Donald Trump, who now only owns a 10 percent stake in the casino, reacted to the news exactly how you’d expect. “I got out seven years ago; my timing was tremendous,” the Donald told the AP over the weekend. Here’s more on his “tremendous” foresight from the AP:
“I let them use my name, but I have nothing to do with it,” Trump told the AP on Saturday. “Atlantic City has suffered for years. Many mistakes were made by government, tremendous mistakes, including no reinvestment in town; they would take casino revenue and put it in places that had nothing to do with Atlantic City.
